


Fragments

by littlemissdelirious



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Incest, Introspection, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-07-15 23:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16074032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemissdelirious/pseuds/littlemissdelirious
Summary: A collection of drabbles inspired by reddit prompts, plot bunnies, scenes that I wish were longer, or scenes that I can't stop thinking about. Mostly grounded in show canon and Lannister-centric. (Characters and relationships included in chapter titles.)1) "I don't believe you." // 2) A girl has trouble forgetting. // 3) Jaime returns with one hand and no apologies. // 4) Another winter; another war. // 5) "What about the North?"





	1. Half (Cersei)

**Author's Note:**

> I began writing these drabbles for the daily prompts on /r/FanFiction and they've been immensely helpful, as I've been meaning to break into this fandom for a while now, but had precisely _no_ idea where to start. I'm quite happy with how they're turning out, so I thought I'd share them here. I'd love to know what you think!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't believe you," he says, and just like that she is alone in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Solitude can be a much-needed break or it can be hell. How does your character feel about being alone today?"

When Jaime is out of sight, she turns on her heel and stalks across the sprawling map of Westeros, under the archway and into the dark, twisting corridors of the Red Keep. She makes it as far as her chambers before she realizes that her fists are still clenched, sharp nails digging painfully into soft palms. She rectifies this and then fills a goblet and perches on the edge of the bed, which now seems impossibly large – as large as a kingdom, and she’s not wanting for more of those. Not just now anyway, because she looks around the room and she looks inside herself, searching for the anger that will see her through the coming war, for the cold wisdom that Father would expect of his daughter, and she uncovers nothing. The thought of what is ahead sails straight past her, as if into an endless pit, and she comes up with only a sweeping emptiness.

Her hand finds its way to her belly and she strokes the taut fabric where there is the ghost of a swelling. She tells herself that she has the advantage and the right allies. She tells herself that Jaime will be back.

“I am not alone,” she tells herself, but there is no one to hear her.


	2. Lemon Cakes (Arya)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A girl is selling oysters by the docks when she smells something familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Smells can evoke powerful memories. A specific scent takes your character back, and this may or may not be a good thing."

A girl smells them before she sees them.

They are displayed in a row, round golden crusts that ooze a filling the colour of sunshine, and she approaches carefully, squeezing the pouch of coins that hangs on her hip. She thinks that she could overcharge one of the sailors for his oysters to make up the difference, or tell the Kindly Man that she tripped and spilled the missing coins into the canal.

 _Stupid_ , she thinks. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_. She won’t get away with the lie, and she shouldn’t try, even if they do resemble the ones that would emerge from Winterfell’s kitchens on Sansa’s name day. 

She never knew where the lemons came from, or how early Mother sent for them. She never thought to ask. She simply sat in the hall and kept the question to herself, because she thought there’d be lemon cakes every year. Just like she thought there’d be Mother and Father, and Robb and Jon, and Bran and Rickon, all gathered around a beaming Sansa, who was two years older than Arya and leagues better at everything.

A girl is not prepared for the sadness that stabs through her midriff and jerks upward, as if to split her in half.

She wonders if Sansa is alive, if she’s still Sansa, if they’re still sisters, but that makes no matter, because a girl has no sisters. She wheels her cart through the winding alleyways, giving herself over to the pungent smells of the shellfish, the briny canals, the unwashed sailors. But the lemon cakes round every corner with her, through the streets and up the stairways, all the way back to the House of Black and White. 

After she tends the bodies in the temple, after she is questioned by the Kindly Man and battered by the Waif, she returns to her cell and the smell of lemon cakes returns alongside her, wrapping her in an embrace that suffocates as it comforts. She can’t shake the memory of them – not here and not anywhere, no more than she can shake the itch in her fingers where Needle belongs.

A girl sits very still and stares hard at the floor, but Arya Stark gives in and thinks of home.


	3. Hands of Gold Are Always Cold (Cersei/Jaime)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime returns to King’s Landing with no apologies and one hand, and Cersei does not know what to make of the change. 
> 
> (Or: Jaime has lost his hand, but it’s his twin who's stumped.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Ouch! Whether they've suffered a skinned knee or a more serious injury, this character could use a little help from a friend or partner right about now." + "Something's broken and your character doesn't really know how to fix it...but they're going to try anyway."

“You’re staring.”

“I’m not,” she snaps, and yet she can’t summon the will to shift her gaze. She curls her fingers tighter around the goblet of wine, crushing it against her palm, and continues to stare; she’s been staring for weeks. Since he appeared in the doorway and spoke her name and her eyes fell to the stump protruding from the dirty rags slung around his arm.

( _It can’t be_ , she thought.)

She recalls the feeling of despair that dropped through her like a heavy stone, the dread of an impact that has yet to come. She neared him and touched his gaunt face and saw the ruined flesh where his hand once was, and just like that she was reeling, swallowing the urge to scream, choking out an order for her handmaiden to prepare a bath and barely managing to send him off. He returned to her chambers afterwards, head shorn and beard shaven, clear of the grime of the road, and her forebodings deepened with every awkward movement that saw them to opposite ends of the solar. They stared at each other across the pool of sunlight that poured in through the archways and pretended that it did not lie between them like a continent.  

(“The brute who did this to you ought to be punished accordingly,” she said. “He should know what it means to harm a Lannister.”

Jaime scowled. “And will that grow me a new hand?”

“I’ll tell Father to send The Mountain to the—”

“Leave it, Cersei,” he said.

This made her cross – and more than a little suspicious. She narrowed her eyes and studied his face and it was almost as though the difference was concentrated in his sullen expression and his creased forehead and the grim set of his mouth.)

When she looks at the stump, she does not know what she sees – not really. The skin is puckered where the wound was closed and the bones of the wrist jut strangely, and then there is nothing. She stands by as Qyburn dresses it, passing down jars of salve and tools that glisten like weapons in her hands, glancing intermittently at the door, because she cannot bear the thought of the handmaiden catching a glimpse of Jaime as he grunts and grimaces and yields to the pain that lances up his arm.

She cannot bear any of it.

( _He’s changed_ , she thought.)

She will have to bear it, she supposes – even when it is at its worst. Those moments, the ones that hang in the air and become more than they are, putting them off their meals and haunting them in their beds. Instinct spurs him to reach for her with his right hand and she recoils and then they go on as if it didn’t happen. He sits at the table, peering at her expectantly, posing benign questions or nothing at all, like a curious child, like a stranger, and then he begins to squirm, for he does not know how to rest the stump. It drapes awkwardly along the arm of the chair. Or it rests in his lap, half-hidden. Cersei hates watching him writhe. She hates the silence. Jaime, who was once so fierce and proud, who could make impossible claims with perfect confidence, who laughed and quipped and wore a smile that was sharper than his sword. She refuses to believe that those things have been taken from him. From her.

(“I don’t suppose there’s a way of attaching a new hand?” she asked Qyburn, realizing as she did that it was only half a jest.)

It's a sickening pull in her gut; a mass of impotent rage and pity and disgust that is churned and churned and doesn't dissolve – and then it is an ominous plain of uncertainty that sprawls into the future. She assumed that Jaime would come back to her the same, or not at all, and she does not know how to uproot those expectations and bend her mind around this new circumstance. She lies awake and pictures him as he’ll be on the day of Joffrey’s wedding, displayed before his sons and the Tyrells and the Dornish and the whole of court. They will snicker. They will know that Lannisters can be captured and maimed. Lannisters can be weak. Jaime can be weak, Jaime can be lost, and if he is weak and lost then surely his twin can be reduced to a similar state.

She will not allow it. She will not let him go and he will not let her down.

And so she visits the goldsmith. She gives him the measurements; she lays out the designs. Gilded steel, she wants – like Jaime’s armour. She wants beauty and elegance, she wants strength and power. She wants what once was, and she wants it always.

When the man finishes the project, she receives him in the audience chambers. There is a faint ringing, like a distant bell, as he approaches and sets the golden hand on the table before her. Cersei slides her own finger over the thumb, and then takes the whole of it into her hands. It is heavy and cold and lifeless and so utterly unlike Jaime – or anything human.

“Is it adequate, Your Grace?” the goldsmith asks.

 _Not in the slightest,_ she thinks. But she nods anyway.


	4. Three Winters (Jaime)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 281 AC. 289 AC. 304 AC.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "This character is burned out - spiritually, emotionally, and/or physically. They can’t go another step today. Alone or with help, they need time and space to recuperate." + "Describe something in the environment that reflects your character in some way."

The false spring has abated, buried under a thick sheet of ice, under identical mounds of snow that were once a city, and yet the throne room is sweltering. Wildfire hisses in the braziers along the walls and Jaime Lannister stands adjacent to his king, clad in full armour and a heavy white cloak. Rivulets of sweat dart down his back and he shifts in discomfort, peering through the smoky haze as the Hand delivers news of the realm: smallfolk starving in droves, Prince Rhaegar still missing, Tywin Lannister silent, another battle lost.

(The gods, as always, have sent trials in spades: a war to eat the men, a winter to finish their children, and a king with no true regard for either.)

Aerys’ beard hangs in dense snarls; his hands slide and twist over protruding pommels, overgrown fingernails clicking against the twisted iron. He gnashes his teeth and declares them all traitors, casting a wild look at Jaime, who wonders absently if this is the day he will be fed to the flames.

He wonders this often – so often that it has begun to feel like destiny. He thinks of Cersei’s face, of Tyrion’s laugh, fills his head with memories of Casterly Rock, but really he thinks of death, for the acrid stench that clings to the air and rushes in and out of his lungs is all that remains of the last man who displeased the mad dragon on the throne before him.

The flames spit and sway, dizzyingly so, and Jaime’s heart pounds in his ears.

Later that night, he wakes in a cold sweat and climbs to the battlements in spite of what could very well be a fever, attempting to flee the nightmare that he’s had three times over: his armour melting into his flesh and his flesh melting from his bones; Cersei and Tyrion bound to similar pyres, pain and panic in their eyes as they look to him for rescue. He stares through the dark as his vision adjusts, across the frozen bay, and seizes a breath to clear his head.

The world is still; the air is raw and crisp and scentless, seeping through his body, and a glacial blast of wind swishes past the stone ledge, piercing his drenched nightshirt and washing over his skin.

It almost feels like freedom.

.

.

.

At Cersei’s behest, the children jam their limbs through four layers of warm clothing before they race to the courtyard. It is their first winter; this is their first snowfall – drifts that rise well above their knees and crunch underfoot; nothing that resembles the meagre dustings they’ve witnessed thus far. Joffrey squints into the sunlight and flinches, pawing at the tufts of snow that settle in his eyelashes. Myrcella topples back, arms flung wide, breathless with delight.

Jaime takes in the uproar from the window, then joins it, for Cersei tires of his presence and sends him away. She is nursing the new baby, two months old – or is it three now? – and a burgeoning cold, and watches him pace testily. (“Must you prowl around like that?” she says. “You're driving me mad.”) But he can’t help it; he is fresh from sorting out the Greyjoys and still in the habit of war: cold steel in his hand and hot blood in his veins. When he closes his eyes, he is lost in a wall of noise, a desperate knot of men, pushing forward with energy he doesn’t have. It feels right. It feels like his element. He has forgotten how uneventful life can be.

Eventually, the echo of voices draws Tyrion out of whatever secret corner it was that housed his latest romp and he teaches Myrcella to pack the snow into a perfect sphere, pelting the Hound and then Joffrey, who promptly orders retaliation. (“Aim for his head, Dog!” the boy cries.)

Jaime leans against a column, lips quirking up as the battle intensifies, dodging wayward snowballs and contributing a few of his own. He feels the cold in his bones and the solid ground beneath his feet and realizes that this is what it means to be home: shrill laughter and the hard thud of snow, numb fingers and chilled bursts of air and the promise of a well-tended hearth at the end of it.

Afterward, the children retreat back into the keep with their hands chafed and their cheeks rosy and no notion of the people in the city beyond, nor the realm beyond that, and Jaime can almost remember being young enough to think of winter as a gift.

.

.

.

He doesn’t stop to breathe until he is well beyond the gates – a puff of air that he can see, and a chill that slithers down his spine. Ahead is an expanse of world that seems impossibly quiet; behind is a doomed city, words that he tries determinedly not to dwell on – _are you a traitor or an idiot?_ – and a strange sinking feeling that was not so much anger and fear as it was long-awaited disappointment. A dull ache that, in the past, might have seethed and burned, like the sting of a lash wound.

Wind brushes through his hair, prickling the back of his neck, and Jaime figures that his next task is to find an inn and send word to Bronn, and then to Tyrion, who will have to persuade Daenerys and the Starks not to kill him outright. He has made his choice – the first in what seems a long while – and he supposes that it will mean fighting alongside the Targaryen queen and the Dothraki army that he battled not a month ago, facing…he does not wholly understand what, only that he has promised to face it.

There is no turning back. Another winter; another war – and when it’s all over the world will be new again, or so they’ll say until the next.

(He has never felt so old.)

A snowflake drifts lazily from the fat clouds spread through the sky above – the first mark of many storms to come, deceivingly serene. Jaime Lannister watches its descent, then pulls a plain leather glove over his golden hand and spurs his horse toward the heart of the north.


	5. After (Sansa)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the North prepares for battle, Sansa Stark prepares for after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [dialogue taken from 8.02]

“Tell me, who manipulated whom?” Daenerys says in a voice that is nearly sincere, and Sansa decides to play along, if only for a moment. She softens her face and speaks the courtesies and all the while her mind seizes on every word and spirals outward. 

( _Love is poison_ , it tells her.)

The queen is ethereal, silver hair and purple eyes and a sweet smile, and Sansa is already certain that Jon will do stupid things for her. _Or stupider than he’s done_ , she thinks. Because that’s the way of it, and it’s too easy to be fooled. Daenerys is, after all, just the sort that Sansa herself would have worshipped when the world beyond Winterfell was the glow of a dream and the lilt of a song, when she put all her faith in beauty and gallantry and faraway places, when Arya blathered on about Visenya Targaryen and Sansa told her to shut up because surely there was no queen in history as worthy and regal as Cersei Lannister.

Sansa has changed since then; there is no doubt about that, but there are still times when the sheer extent of it crashes over her. She reaches into the back of her mind to commune with the version of herself who stood in the courtyard between Robb and Arya and it is like calling up a memory of a different person, because she is not that girl anymore, and she realizes that the queen who sits here before her and reaches for her hands is just the sort she’ll never trust again.

(Sansa sees the world for what it is now: black and white and, even then, mostly black. _Assume the worst_ , her mind tells her.)

“And what happens afterwards?” she asks, when the fleeting smiles clear and the air begins to thicken once more. “We defeat the dead, we destroy Cersei – what happens then?”

“I take the Iron Throne,” Daenerys says without delay, without doubt, and Sansa watches her closely, wondering if she’s ever properly bled for anything. If she believes herself invincible, if she has ever taken the time to understand, truly understand, any of the things that she lays claim to, or if she thinks only about _after_ , twelve steps ahead but never two, and always about what there will be to take when her feet have left that many imprints in the ash behind her.

Sansa does not know what she believes, and at times she does not know what she feels, but she knows what she can’t forget. She knows that they scoured the castle clean and burned the Bolton banners with the Bolton dead; she knows that Father bled, Robb bled, Jon bled, Mother and Arya and Bran and Rickon bled, for their family, for Winterfell, for the North, and they found their way back or didn’t, and now they are expected to offer it up to a queen who has occupied it for all of a fortnight, who has no more knowledge than love for it, who sees only a title and a conquest and another Targaryen marker on the map.

And perhaps it’s foolish to be thinking of after, perhaps they’ll all be dead come sunrise, but there are still moments when Sansa closes her eyes and she is clutching Theon’s hand as they plunge into a snow drift below the ramparts, or she is dangling out the Moon Door looking down down _down_ , or pleading on the steps of the sept as a sword whizzes through the air and chops through her father and her legs give out under her. All the times she thought there would be no after and there was, whether she was equal to facing it or not.

(Ramsay doesn’t exist now, nor does Lysa, nor does Joffrey, or even the Sept of Baelor, so perhaps none of it happened, perhaps it meant nothing, but it is all so real to her, seething wounds in her mind that tear open and bleed into her nightmares every night.

There will be an after. There is always an after.)

Sansa fixes her eyes on Daenerys’, unflinching. She does not know what she believes, and at times she does not know what she feels, but she knows the ground beneath her feet, the ground that _keeps_ her on her feet, and she knows that she will do everything in her power not to yield it – not for a Targaryen, not for a Lannister, not for anyone.

“And what about the North?” she says. “It was taken from us and we took it back and we said we’d never bow to anyone else again.” She arches forward and her voice is steel. _“What about the North?”_


End file.
